Resonance
by Hybridkylin
Summary: Actions have consequences. Danny discovers that when something is woken, it doesn't easily go back to sleep. Sacrifice AU. Merry Christmas, Sapphireswimming!
1. Resonance

**A/N: So I told myself I wouldn't post anything here until Possession was complete. Whoops.**

**This is based on the lovely Sapphireswimming's Sacrifice, suffix here s/10008824/1/Sacrifice. Go read it; it's fantastic and this will make a lot more sense.**

**If any of you play Exalted, you may recognize some things in here as well.**

XXXXXX

Danny woke.

He wasn't sure what had woken him, but that was not unusual. After some staring at the rush patched ceiling, he decided that since he was awake _anyway_, he might as well get a drink of water.

He folded over the blanket so as not to lose any bodyheat and padded down the stone steps as quietly as he could. The stone was cool on his bare feet, and the house was silent; even his father's snores having faded to a soft distant rumbling. He began making his way to the old well.

On deciding to return to the ancestral city, his parents had chosen a building they had spotted on their initial forays into it as a base of operations, and then, when the process of deciphering ancient scrawl and exploring and restoring the area had begun to stretch on for months, a home.

It was made of the same aged white stone that was ubiquitous in the city, plant scarred where thick curling vines had been cleared, and built like a miniature fortress; four walls with an extra room on top of each corner enclosing a courtyard with a well and the remains of what had probably been flowerbeds, capped with terracotta tiled roofs that flared out and up at the tips. A large amount of said tiles had fallen or simply gone missing.

Its architect had probably not intended for it to be such a bastion. From what his parents could gather from the tiled floor insets it had been some kind of villa, or perhaps an upmarket inn. It clearly had been repurposed; while the wooden boards that had once barred the windows had rotted away, the rust around the nail holes that had held them there remained.

Danny tried not to remember the skeleton Jazz had inadvertently found in the cellar, perfectly preserved in the dry cool dark amidst broken wine racks. It had been clutching a bottle.

The well water was still and dark, reflecting the full moon almost perfectly. The light from it was bright enough to cast shadows and almost seemed to make the stone glow; as he leaned over it looked like his hair had been bleached white.

He set about winching the bucket up, scattering his reflection into a thousand distorted pieces, before dipping the cup that had been chained to one of the post holding the well's little roof up into it and taking a long draught. It was ice cold, but all the more refreshing for it. He quietly lowered the bucket back in so as not to make a splash.

He looked up at the sky. It was completely clear; the band of the celestial river stretching clear across it. The very night air seemed filled with enticing potential, and the stones under his feet felt as if they were thrumming with quiet pent up energy. What kind of potential or energy, Danny didn't know, but he suddenly realized why he was awake.

He shifted from foot to foot. His room was too confining, and besides, he was too, too… _something _to sleep. He wanted to run. He wanted to _explore_. To see what the rest of the city was like.

He was halfway to the as yet uncleared vines in one corner of the courtyard before he remembered it was exactly this which had caused him to go into the old temple and get hit with what felt like indoor lightning. He paused, and then shrugged and began climbing. The stars were out, the moon was better than any torch he could hope to have, the air was just that perfect balance between warm stillness and cool breeze… who knew when a night like this would happen again.

He scrabbled across the orange tiles, dropped down to the road below on the other side, and began wandering down the silent empty streets, a wordless elation and satisfaction filling him. He idly brushed his fingertips along the pitted wall to his left as he walked. He felt like nothing could touch him. He felt completely at home.

He blinked, and the world was different.

What had been a still, calm intersection was now a busy thoroughfare, although for some reason it didn't seem as busy as it _should_ have been. Throngs of strange creatures walked and slithered and _flew, _often entirely through buildings as if they were completely not there, the stream breaking and reforming around him, completely ignoring him. He spun around, gaping.

That there was something that looked like a ball of feet, rolling across the ground like tumbleweed. Those three hooded figures in black conversing near an empty doorway that had been the entrance to a shop in its past life seemed more hood than figure. There was a flock of mouths with bat wings, and _was that a dragon!?_ That it was, or something that seemed very much like it, long and sinuous and carrying a scroll in its mouth with the intense focus of a messenger that will absolutely _not_ be stayed about its business. He watched as it wound its way across the sky and disappeared from view.

Colours seemed brighter, even as the world seemed slightly out of focus, like the surface of an oil slick. He felt no fear. Everything seemed so much more normal than the sharp, dull place he'd left. It felt like he'd been blind and now wasn't.

Everything made sense. There was only one explanation for it.

_Oh. I'm dreaming._

He decided to just roll with it, and turned left, ignoring the occasional glance or whisper from the _things_ that he passed or passed him. He took his time, taking everything in, occasionally pausing to examine anything that caught his eye, like the fact the broken windows seemed to have a strange not quite there glass in them, and the strange glowing orange balls a vendor that looked like thousands of pieces of paper stitched together had been selling. It had chittered and pressed one into his palms, and he had somehow managed to understand, or at least guess, its intent.

_free sample on the house yes yes be seeing you later patron_

As he was chewing it; it was sort of like a fruit in its sweetness if you removed the seed and rind and stem and basically anything that could possibly identify it as a fruit, he caught sight of his reflection in the not glass and moved in for a closer look. His eyes were glowing green, and his hair was that same lunar white; he tugged it down in front of him to get a better look, taking another bite. His clothes had changed too; they resembled his pyjamas but were black and white and shifted oddly in their colouration as he moved, like light and shadow. _Huh_. And that was all he really thought of it before moving on.

It was, after all, a dream.

He was licking the last of the juice from his fingertips when he spotted something dark and clawed crouched on the bar of an old hanging shop sign that was clearly on its last legs; blurred by time into illegibility, connected only by a single chain that was half rusted through. It swung in the breeze, and as he watched the shadowy thing leaned down and began to chew at the sole remaining connector.

He felt a flicker of irrational anger at the action. Before he even fully registered what he was doing he was cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting up at it.

"_Hey! Quit it!"_

It paused, and somehow managed to look both guilty and not sorry at all, bobbing its upper body in an obsequious bow that had only a small mocking edge.

_yes, your excellency, of course, your excellency_

He turned away and continued… patrolling, that was what he realized he was doing, feeling the eyes of the thing on his back all the way down the street. He kicked a rock and sighed. Gone was his previous good mood. He'd probably have been a lot more satisfied with that answer if he didn't know for a fact the decay spirit would be right back at it as soon as he was out of sight.

Besides, there were bigger battles to fight than over a single shop sign.

His path became more purposeful, his feet striding towards the source of disturbances that seemed to ripple through the stones of the city itself, the barest of tremors in a spider web but still a concern. He hopped fences and jumped across roofs, bare feet making no sound even as he sped up and started to run.

The crowd began to thin until it was gone entirely as he reached the outskirts of the city, and he got there in record time, not even out of breath. It was a courtyard that had once been a marketplace, white pillars lying fallen around the perimeter. Grass was shooting up through the cracks in the worn marble, and he tensed and began scanning the area from his position in the shadows of one that had miraculously stayed upright. Something was definitely here, he could just _tell_.

A pair of glowing green eyes shifted across from the quad. They were attached to what looked like a dog, if a dog had ever been as tall as a man at the shoulder and made not from flesh and blood but moss and twigs and earth, with massive thorns for fangs. The hand that had been lightly resting on the pillar unconsciously tightened on the stone as the thing _howled_, something that was more summons rippling out through the world than sound, and then dipped it's head and bit right _through_ the stone, jaws slipping through it as if it were water. Where it bit, he could see, or was it feel, the stone weaken, existing cracks widening and new ones forming as relentless roots squirmed their way into them and pried them open. He could see the whispering grass snakes that had arrived in response to the call worm their way in and out of the surrounding structures, and strangling weeds and vines and yes, grasses, began to grow where they had not, faster than they should, even as the dog of unbroken earth clawed and chewed at the base of a half broken pillar which finally gave up and fell entirely.

That previous anger came back in a surge, and his fist curled as it settled into something hard. This wasn't natural growth, which he didn't like at the best of times but put up with. This was a deliberate attempt to break down _his_ city further.

He stepped out into plain sight, glaring at the dog with burning eyes, his entire presence filling up the now small seeming arena with _i am here i am back i am angry did you think I wouldn't notice_. The grass snakes fled to the shadows, watching with flickering tongues.

The dog broke off from its industrious destruction and looked to the source of the challenge; its eyes shifted into a rageful scarlet and he was slammed full force with a great and terrible hatred as it growled low and loud and made the stones quail and quiver. Their respective underlings sidelined, he bared his teeth back and let green fire coalesce around his fists; this was an old and shared enmity between their types.

The fight started without warning as its jaws snapped shut like a trap on the air where he'd been. The bite had been a feint, however, as the dog followed through with a headbutt that catapulted him straight through the pillar he had been hiding behind. He skidded along the ground, digging in his fingers and the balls of his feet into the flagstones to stop his movement and sprang forward, delivering a werefire fueled uppercut to the dog's jaw that sent a couple of its thornteeth flying. Weak as he was, prayerless as he was, this was his turf. _He_ had the advantage.

He hoped.

The dog snarled and swiped at him with a frying pan sized paw that he dodged by inches. It pressed the advantage and attacked and attacked with relentless fury, leaving him no room to counter if he wanted to also avoid being hit. In the end, it managed to clip his side, scoring bloody red… red? that wasn't right… lines deep into it.

The pain seemed to bring him to his senses, or draw him out of them. The middle of a fight is a terrible time to have a _wait, what the hell am I doing_ revelation, and the dog's massive left paw slammed into him, pinning him down. He instinctively struggled at the grip, grasping what he could reach of the appendage and trying to burn it with that same fire.

The dog was clearly in pain as the mossy fur was scorched off, but the pressure crushing his chest only increased. Jaws rushed for his throat, and he closed his eyes…

And nothing. Danny opened his eyes, and the world was duller. The outlines of things were sharper. And he was in his room, panting, half upright and coated with sweat.

Just a nightmare.

He rolled over, making to fall back asleep, and winced as his side twinged. He pulled back the blanket and pulled up his pyjama shirt, twisting against the pain to try and see the source of it.

Three bloody, angry red, half healed furrows on his side.


	2. A Temple Is The House Of A God

_O mighty god… you should get your butt over here if you don't want to miss the fireworks._

"Saaaaaaaaam," he groaned, shading his eyes with one arm at the familiar voice. "That's not how prayers _work_." He sniffed. Had she used incense? It was the cheap stuff, twenty sticks for a coin and probably everywhere by this point, but even a small burnt sacrifice like this was enough to increase the prominence of the message over the background rush he'd spent five sleepless nights desperately trying to learn to tune out.

Not for the first time, he wished he could actually _reply_, even if only to tell Paulina or Dash to quit it. Some of the things they'd sent had definitely been more information than he'd ever, ever wanted to know, or digs at himself and his friends he didn't want to hear.

"Did you say something, Danny?" Jazz said, from where she was already hanging up the lanterns on the courtyard's edging.

"Huh? No. Ooooon an unrelated note, my friends are already at the festival so I'm just gonna say this floor's done seeya bye!"

He had to admit, though, it was effective given he was already rushing out the door, taking barely just enough time to leave the mop leaning against the wall instead of letting it crash to the floor.

"Mom and Dad said we could go _after_, Danny!" Jazz called after him, but he'd already disappeared. She lit the last lantern, stepped down the ladder, and stalked towards the mop and bucket, muttering "Oh, he's so going to owe me for this."

But the tiled mosaic was already pristine, save for the water where the mop had fallen from its place on the wall and splatted against the ground. Odd. She went to put the mop and bucket away, and then to write it down as the latest entry on her list dedicated to such oddities.

By the time he got there, the sun had set completely, and the Festival of Lights was in full swing. It was one of those traditions so old that people had forgotten the reason they'd been started, or even what they _meant_, dating from before they'd left the city apparently, since his parents had found reference to it in old texts. That said, very few people passed off an excuse to party.

True to the name, there were lights everywhere, lanterns of every kind, and vendors who were respectable alchemists for the rest of the year had set up stalls on the sides of the streets selling glowing paints and powders, many of the crowd having adorned themselves with them already in swirls and patterns and streaks. He sidestepped two little kids who had bought some just to throw at each other, running through the sea of legs and laughing. Music was already starting up, coins going into the hats of buskers, and some were dancing. The smell of incense mingled with that of cooking food.

It was a lively atmosphere, and enough to send him fighting off a wave of nostalgia, but it was… subdued. Danny had never had this feeling since the Event, but from what Sam and Tucker had told him and from what he'd overheard from others, being in the city felt… not _exactly_ like trespassing, but more like stepping into a graveyard. The stones within were afforded respect, but also wariness. Very few people of the small proportion intrepid enough to try resettle it after his parent's success ever left the restored chunk of the city that had been declared to be safe, for any reason.

He should know, he spent a lot of his nights increasing the size of it.

"Over here!" Tucker waved at him from the roof of a house that hadn't found an owner yet, Sam next to him, and he grinned and climbed up to it by way of fence in two quick movements. He had to admit, this gave a much better view. He could see the boxes of fireworks already being set up in the small square, the still nonfunctional fountain being carefully navigated around.

"Here, hold still." He didn't wrench his gaze away in time fast enough to avoid acquiring what was probably a sparkling bright blue streak in his hair judging from the small pot in Sam's hands and the paint coating her fingers, Tucker grinning. "It'll smudge, you know," he said, as Danny reached up to touch it, stopping at the words. He'd taken off his hat for once, although it still peeked from his pocket, and bars of glowing bright red streaked his short, almost shaven, hair. Sam, Danny could see, had gone for swirls of dark green over her skin.

The fireworks did not disappoint. Sparks of red and green and gold, sparkling, crackling white, and something that was _almost_, but not quite blue flared and died, lighting up the surrounding houses with brief but loud pops and bangs that went into the heart and stayed there. Tucker had told him some Festivals ago that what the alchemists really wanted, well, other than the secret to immortality, was something that would burn pure bright blue without even a trace of green. Apparently they still hadn't managed it, but then they hadn't managed immortality either.

Danny wondered if _he_ was immortal now. It was a thought that was unpleasant to consider from either angle, so he pushed it away and continued watching, laughing and commenting with his friends, leaning back on his elbows. It seemed like others had had the same idea to watch from the roofs; he could make out dark shapes on the surrounding houses that became momentarily illuminated with each flash, pointing up at it. The people in the square were also fascinating to watch, careful choreography involved in lighting the next set of fuses while the first were exploding in the sky, keeping to a threadthin rhythm.

Something _pushed_ at him, on the edge of awareness, and he steadfastly ignored it. Tonight was supposed to be _fun_, and he wanted just _one_ break from spirit stuff for once, was that too much to ask? Apparently not, as it came again and then again, as insistent as a fly against a windowpane, and he groaned.

His friends turned to look at him. "What is it?" Sam asked, the words having a dual meaning. The last of the fireworks began to die.

"I don't know," he replied, and sighed. "I guess I'll go see what they want." He concentrated on shifting ever so slightly, not completely, out of reality. It was difficult, straddling worlds like this, like standing with one foot on each of two pillars that were _definitely _uncomfortably far apart, but it let his friends still see and hear him. It was largely dark up here now, and the sounds of revelry were rising again, so he wasn't bothered about anyone else doing so.

He looked up with eyes glinting green and caught a flash of white before a punch to the chest knocked him off the roof entirely. He fell two stories back first, landing with a gasp as all the air was knocked from him, but the stones of the street had cushioned his fall and he had no more injury than mild bruising.

He heard a twin call of "Danny!" as the shapes that were Sam and Tucker leaned over the edge, the lights that hung there lighting up their faces from below. "I'm fine," he groaned, as much for the benefit of the concerned person helping him up as them, and then, since they couldn't hear him, he cupped his hands and shouted it up at them. "I'm fine!" He dodged an admonishment to not jump off roofs, you could have been seriously hurt kid, and went to meet them where they were climbing down, distracted by a presence that had not gone away and still demanded attention.

"What _was_ that?" Tucker said, and Danny shook his head as by unconscious agreement they stepped into what would have normally been a dark alleyway. "I didn't get a good look before, well…" he replied.

He tried again, this time _sidestepping _as he came into physical existence on the other plane. Sure enough, he'd narrowly dodged a kick… from a girl with white hair, a neon green streak going all the way from her temple to the tip of a ponytail, and narrowed eyes as violently green as his own. Wind that seemed to affect nothing else whipped around her, causing her hair and clothes to flutter.

"Whoa!" he said, as she tried to punch him again, and this time he had enough forewarning to let himself be more _human_ for a second, letting her pass straight through him. It was a headache trying to do that while still being able to see and hear her, and he found himself panting. "What have I ever done to you?" It wasn't entirely a rhetorical question. Apparently he'd been very good at annoying people in the past.

"You're the jerk that's stealing my people! Stop materializing and hold still!"

"Wait, _your_ people? I'm not stealing anyone!" He wracked his brain for answers as to who this girl might be, but as far as he knew he'd never met her before.

"Liar! They're right there!" She pointed at Sam and Tucker, and then gestured around her. "Are you telling me you're _not_ this city's god, and these people _aren't_ Valley People?"

Oh. _Oh._ That halfway explained it, although... "Aren't you a patron of wanderers?" Wind spirits tended to take that take that role a lot, he recalled. They had a mercuriality that suited it.

She stuck out her tongue at him. "What do you think happens when wanderers settle down, city jerk? I was looking after them and they decided to stay so I did too because they were so lost and scared and hungry and I made things better and I've been working really hard to keep them safe and now you're ruining everything and it's _not fair!_" She sounded like she was fighting back tears on the last two words.

"Look, I'm sorry but…" and that's as far as he got while advancing towards her, palms held up, before getting kicked hard enough to skid along the cobbles, to a cry from his friends who had previously seemed to be amused by him talking to apparent thin air. A hand closed on the front of his clothing, and pulled his face up towards hers.

"But _what_, old man?"

"But I… wh… _old man!?_"

"It's the hair," he could hear Tucker murmur to Sam, who nodded. It was completely white already? He really hoped no one came into this alley about now, and thankfully, despite all the laws of the known universe concerning irony, no one did.

"Well, you are," the girl said at the same time.

"I'm _fourteen_," he said, struggling to his feet, and surprisingly, she let him. He looked up, and her face held a horrified fascination. She circled him, and he noticed she was actually floating, poking his shoulder and getting her hand slapped away when she tried to hold apart his eyelids to peer into an eye.

"What did you _do_ to yourself? You're all… solid and squidgy."

She peered at him intently, and it was the kind of look that made you feel like every layer of you, inside and out, was being simultaneously observed. He shifted uncomfortably under it, but at least she'd stopped attacking.

There was a gasp. "You're one of _mine!?_" She rushed towards him, and the green fire he summoned in response dissipated uselessly like smoke as he was violently hugged hard enough to have to stumble backwards to maintain his balance. "You're one of mine, and you can _see me!_" Danny had no idea what was going on anymore, except that to an outside observer he probably looked ridiculous with his arms pinned to his sides and his person being shaken back and forth.

"Uh, yeah? Kinda… need to… breathe, here." He managed to get out. He was let go, and took a second to catch his breath as the girl floated curiously over to his friends who were looking at him with concern.

"Are these your priests?" He laughed a little.

"She wants to know if you're my priests," he said to said to Sam and Tucker by way of explanation.

"It's a she?" Tucker said, looking thoughtful, like this idea had potential. "What does she look like?"

Danny looked at the girl and tried to keep a straight face as she made faces at him from behind his friends. "She looks… scarily like me, actually." Or at least what he looked like when he was like this, with the white hair and green eyes, and he distantly noticed his clothing had almost completely blackened by now. The similarity was a little unnerving.

Tucker looked like he regretted boarding this train of thought, and you could _see_ the moment he changed the subject even before he opened his mouth. "Priests, huh?"

"That's a weird thought," Sam mused.

Tucker adopted an imperious stance, hand held high as if delivering a speech. "In the name of Danny, I declare that all hot girls should wear revealing clothing!" He dropped back into a more normal position. "What do you think? Maybe I need a headdress or something."

"I think," said Sam. "That if you do that,_ I'm_ going to prohibit the eating of meat."

"Noooo!"

Danny grinned and rolled his eyes, turning back to the girl, who looked like she was contemplating something carefully. "They're my friends," he said simply.

She pulled on his arm. "Come on, I've got something to show you," she said. He looked back to where his friends had begun to bicker as per usual, and then back to her. "Can't it wait?" he said. The festival wasn't over yet, and besides, he was a little suspicious still. She _had_ just punched him off a building.

"Nope!" she said, and the pull on his arm became a tug, and suddenly the world was moving at very unfair speeds. He had just enough time to shift into the spirit plane completely before he passed through the house he would have otherwise smacked face first into. He dug his heels into the stone of the streets and houses behind it, and they slowed, but then the girl leaped and didn't come back down and he was too high to find purchase. The roar of wind surrounded them, blocking out sound and whipping his clothes and hair.

"Slow _down!_" He yelled over it, and the girl laughed, and somehow, impossibly, they went _faster_, the world howling by in a blur of colour, aerial spirits of various kinds getting hurriedly out of the way or being dodged around with inches to spare, Danny being dragged behind like a flag. They left a trail of angry sounds behind them. He felt a twinge as they passed through the city walls, but it was okay, still okay, he was still within the territory.

Who was he kidding. He could _feel_ when they left the city boundaries completely shortly after, and irrational panic flooded him and clouded his thoughts. He began to struggle against the hold in earnest, straining to get back.

"Hey, you're throwing off my flight path! Suck it up, city god, I know you can deal." The girl didn't have to raise her voice at all. "It'll be _fine_ without you for a bit, otherwise you wouldn't ever visit the Celestial City." The last you had the sense of the general rather than the specific.

"_Celestial _City?" said the part of him that wasn't feeling acute supernatural separation anxiety and therefore was the part he was withdrawing into in self defense and also to distract himself from just how high they were. "I thought the air just got thinner until it wasn't there at all, and then you just hit the Firmament." He'd always held an interest in the night sky. He could name every single one of the major and minor constellations, and what they meant, and had learnt as much astrology as he could get his hands on. There'd been a period where asking him to tell fortunes had been a fad amongst the other kids, and some of them had even been correct. But then the old man with hands that uncontrollably shook and the need of a young assistant to align the handground lenses and draw straight lines had died, and there was no one else within timesparable distance that could teach him, even if they would.

"It's not in the _sky_, you doof, it's more…" he could tell she was searching for an explanation for something she'd never really thought about. "It's kinda just _there_. Like a huge sanctum that doesn't belong to anyone. That anyone can get into, if they can find a Gate."

The word 'Gate' resonated in his mind, and it felt important, that tip on the tongue feeling of having forgotten something you were going to do or should be doing or should have done, frustratingly slippery. He shook his head and it faded, replaced by curiosity. "What's a sanctum?"

The girl gave him an '_are you kidding me' _look over her shoulder before turning back. "Wow, you must have hit your head _really_ hard," she said conversationally. "House, home, abode, place of dwelling, _temple_… except not. You know."

"No," he replied flatly. "Look …" He continued to shout, and realized he had no idea what to call her, not even a title.

"Elle," she said without looking behind her. The rush of the world had slowed a little during the conversation, although it was still ungodly fast.

"Elle," he said, "If I throw up on you it's entirely your fault."

"Okay," she said, unconcernedly, before pointing down. "Hey look, road snake!" And she was racing down, and he was being pulled down with her, and then they were skidding along the surface of a road, edge markers flying by, except it wasn't the road itself, which he could see below, but the flat back of a large long, sinuous thing that looped in arches and curls the road certainly did not. Oh yeah, he was definitely gonna throw up.

Elle was laughing and whooping, leaning into the corners. She _stomped_ down, and the head of the road spirit sharply rose up from its slumber on the ground in alarm, making for a ramp that sent them arcing up into the sky. She let go of his arm and he panicked and flailed as he reached the zenith of the motion and began to fall. Desperately, he mentally reached out for the stones below, but they weren't _his_ and didn't respond.

"_Help!_" he called, and he was bracing for impact a second away when the back of his clothing was grasped and yanked _up_. Wind swirled around him, and even when the hand let go it supported him in the air as a curious face leaned into his field of view.

"You can't fly?" the spirit girl said.

"_No,_" he said testily. "Put me down." The wind died abruptly and he dropped to the ground with an _oof!_

"Weird. We're here anyway," she said.

"Here?" He hadn't had much of a chance to observe his surroundings in all the excitement, but he stood up and did so, dusting himself off absentmindedly.

It all hit in a wave of nostalgia. It was the scent of pine that did it, coming from both the trees and the houses almost entirely built of it, and that of water, and bare feet on flattened earth that was almost always covered in shed needles, because here on the outer streets people had better things to do with their time than keep brushing them away, and the occasional cone that hadn't been snatched up for firewood already.

The Festival was in full swing here, too, and some distance away he could see someone had even tried to adorn the lazy, sleepy river with what were probably little bark rafts with candles on them, like he could remember racing many times before.

He was _home_. Some part of him vociferously objected to this idea, and was told to butt out.

He realized not all of the lights everywhere were man made. Some _moved_, larger than fireflies and too controlled to be pushed by wind. The wisps seemed drawn out from the forest to the real lanterns like moths to flame, dancing around them. Others decorated the pine branches, and he got the sense they were watching carefully.

In the background, Elle was flitting from house to house, muttering to herself, and he ran over to her just as she exclaimed "Aha! This one!" She plucked a single lantern from the eaves, holding it up proudly, and floated down to him as he moved to avoid having a drunk partygoer go through him. He technically didn't have to, but seeing the inside of someone _once_ had been enough.

"Here it is," she said, holding it out. This close, he could see it was made of woven grass, four pillars holding up a tapered pointed roof that had a ring at the tip. Inside, a small white ball of light that definitely wasn't a flame shone brightly.

"This is what you wanted to show me?" he said, reaching for it, only for her to snatch it away.

"No," she said, "what I want to show you is _inside_."

He barely managed to get the first syllable of "what?" out before she set the lantern with care down on the ground and spoke the word 'open' with uncharacteristic gravity, and the grass frame rapidly expanded in size to something resembling a small gazebo, the unchanged light illuminating the top of the doorway.

She stepped across the threshold, and vanished. He moved cautiously closer, resting a hand on the rough twine of one of the pillars, and leaned backwards when she reappeared again just long enough to say "Come on, slowpoke!" before disappearing again.

He took a breath, and stepped forward, and was somewhere else.

It looked a lot like the house he'd grown up in, sans his parent's various alterations. A room made entirely of pine wood, with the floorboards having the smoothness that came from generations of feet taking out all the splinters rather than sanding. It looked aged, but in the way that only increases the beauty of wood, and the edgings were carved with a variety of natural scenes. There was a small round table in the center, and wicker chairs, and Danny got the sense that they had been made more for the _hope_ of visitors than actual requirement.

There was shelving on the walls, filled with various objects; children's toys, often. Pinecones. A twist of copper. A fang that might have been from a dog or wolf or something else entirely, he couldn't tell.

What drew him, though, was the large window… picture frame… window? Placed across from what was a perfectly ordinary door when he glanced back, it depicted from an somewhat aerial view a city that stretched on farther than the eye could see, buildings that rose up like tree trunks made of a soft golden sandstone separated by canals of quicksilver that reflected a starry sky. If it was a painting it was amazingly detailed; he could make out punts and boats with arched dragon necks floating up and down the rivers, and even the triangular patterning on their stone borders. It seemed familiar.

The sky suddenly switched to a cloudless bright blue containing a blazing sun and he jerked out of his reverie. Not a painting, then.

"_That's_ the Celestial City," Elle said behind him, but he didn't need the confirmation. "I only went there once but…" she shrugged. Evidently she'd liked it enough to make it part of her sanctum. He understood what the term meant, now.

"And city gods go there?" he said, continuing to watch it. Now that he was looking for it, he could see the spirits on the streets and the boats keep moving slightly. There was a snort behind him, mixed with laughter. "A lot of gods do. All the big important ones live there. Like that guy?" She pointed at the sun. "He _never_ leaves."

"I mean, where did you think the paperwork went?" she continued.

"There's paperwork?" he said, half jokingly, turning towards her slightly, and she laughed the laugh of someone who didn't do it either.

"Not that anyone cares about. I haven't had even the sniff of an audit in two hundred years." She looked at the picture and her face became despondent. "No one there cares about us little gods."

Not sure exactly why, he wrenched his gaze away and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Hey," he said. "There was something you wanted to show me?"

"Oh! Yeah!" She raced around the room like a whirlwind; literally, as anything that could fluttered at the quick movement of air. She settled at one of the shelves and took from it a scroll. It seemed familiar too, but in an entirely different way; it looked like one of the many his parents pored through every day. A sense of foreboding rose up in him.

She handed it to him, and he unrolled it. The glyphic script was gibberish interspersed with the occasional word he'd picked up here and there, but he waited patiently and with a sort of mental '_click'_ suddenly it all made perfect sense. He skimmed through it. It talked of geomancy and the alignment of walls to catch beneficial forces, and the uses of the compass directions, and the importance of listening to the landscape, and white stone. And then it began to get more specific, the hairs rising up on the back of his neck. It detailed the building of a temple, of the exact dimensions and materials to be used, interspersed with hefty admonishments on the consequences of straying from the design; evidently the writer took architecture very seriously.

One line struck out at him. _…and shall be made an inner sanctum of these lengths, such that our benevolent god hath a place to dwell and be at peace, and all that crosses the threshold shall be offerings; for trespassers they shall be struck down…_

He quickly rolled up the scroll. "Elle?" He said, and she looked up guiltily, before looking down just as such. "What is this? Why is it _here_?"

"I stole it," she whispered, not looking up. "I didn't want my people going back to an empty city and a cruel god. So I stole the scroll that had the key to it. And when your parents went ahead anyway, I got desperate. I'm sorry for breaking your father's arm." She sniffed. "I thought I'd succeeded! They gave up, and everything was going to be fine!"

Danny found himself running calculations in his head. A young wind spirit, although she wasn't just that anymore, with no worshippers, and without the advantage of a dual existence like he had, dematerializing a physical object. It would have cost her a great deal.

There was a more salient point, though. "You're the one who broke my dad's arm!?"

"I panicked, okay? I pushed him off the building with a gust; he was only meant to get bruised."

That sort of influence on the material world would have cost her almost as much. She wouldn't have been able to catch his dad, and maybe the reason he was only seeing her now was because it had taken _that_ long to recover. He couldn't be certain.

"There's better ways to say hello, you know," he said, smiling slightly. She was already forgiven, since no real harm had come of it, and his dad's sling had come off to reveal a perfectly fine arm some time ago.

She looked up quickly, caught his expression and huffed, folding her arms, although she also seemed to relax a little. And then one of those impulses that struck him on occasion happened, and he found himself hugging her as she stiffened in surprise.

"Thank you," he said. "For looking after them. You didn't have to do that." While it was disturbing that in some ways this girl had been born from his death, that wasn't _her_ fault. She'd done the best she could have.

He pulled back before it got awkward, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the door. "Anyway, my friends will be wondering where I got to…" Not to mention the fact his city was currently unguarded _itched_ at his thoughts in a distinctly uncomfortable manner. "So I should probably be going before all the food's gone."

"You will come back to visit, though, right?" she said hopefully, clasping her hands together.

"Uh…" he replied.

"Right?" she repeated, putting on a spectacular pair of puppy dog eyes, complete with quivering lower lip.

"You can always visit _me_," he pointed out diplomatically. The lip quivered harder. He rolled his eyes. "Alright, I'll visit. _Sometime_."

The puppy dog eyes immediately disappeared as she punched the air with a "Yes!" He shook his head as he pocketed the scroll in the seemingly bottomless folds of his clothing, and she waved as he opened the door and stepped back out into the town, the grasswoven structure shrinking back into a lantern behind him. It didn't feel right to leave it there, so he placed it back on one of the houses as near as he could guess to its original position.

He stood back once he was sure it would stay there, nodded, turned, and took a step forward, and suddenly was no longer there, but standing in his room, with the bed unmade and his various possessions brought with him spread out in the manner of a long claimed space. The sounds of revelry drifted from the window, and he made sure to shed any remaining godliness before running outside again.

He was home.


End file.
